On the evening of February 17, 1864, the first victim of a submarine’s torpedo attack sank off Charleston S. C. This marked the debut of the underwater craft as an actual factor in naval warfare. The submarine itself was a weapon whose origin is found in antiquity, along with practically all the so-called modern weapons. It is not the purpose of this article to discuss the evolution of this type of boat, but an attempt to clear up some of the many discrepancies which confuse the story of the submarine operating off Charleston during the winter of 1863-64.
In the limited space of an article, it is impossible to discuss the methods used to sift fancy from fact in the many stories concerning this submersible. The author has collected many and various accounts m his five or six years study of this subject. For a yardstick, first-hand descriptions of two gentlemen of Charleston have been used. A rough draft of the craft made by one of these gentlemen, Mr. W. G. Mazyck, enabled the writer to recognize a sketch hanging in a Charleston home as a likeness of the submarine. This sketch is attributed to a Confederate artist at Charleston, Conrad Wise Chapman, 30 of whose canvases are found in the Confederate Museum at Richmond. Extreme attention to detail in this sketch has made it a most valuable help in reproducing the boat as a model, photographs of which illustrate this article.
In addition to these excellent sources, a grandson of James R. McClintock, one of the builders of the craft, has been of great aid in clearing up some of the disputed points. Mr. Henry C. Loughmiller, of New York, contributed his scrapbook and from it many important details were explained.
The boat was built at Mobile in the shops of Parks and Lyons, by McClintock and Horace L. Hunley. It was McClintock’s third try at submarines, his two previous boats failing to see action through no fault of either the boat or designer. Assisting them as a mechanic was a man named Alexander, who 40 years later gave an excellent description of the construction and operation of the boat.
Apparently McClintock had little choice of materials for construction, the economic condition of the Confederacy necessitating the utilization of makeshifts. They had at their disposal an iron boiler 25 feet long and 4 feet in diameter, as well as some additional boiler plate. To make the hull, they first cut the boiler in half longitudinally through the sides and pieced it with a one-foot strip of iron riveted in place. At either end bulkheads reaching nearly to the top were built in and to these the pieces forming the bow and stern were riveted.
These end pieces were shaped like a rounded wedge and formed the bow and stern compartments, within which were the ballast tanks for controlling the buoyancy. They were flooded by a valve on the other side of the bulkhead, operated by the officer at that station. Near the bottom, outlet pipes ran to hand pumps located at each bulkhead and these served to empty the tank.
On the outside the hull presented the profile of a rectangular oblong about 40 feet long and 5 high. The center portion, where the boiler formed the actual hull, was rounded, 4 feet wide and 5 high. The ends tapered on their sides to a sharp bow and stern. The deck line was straight from stem to stern, being broken in only four places, by two hatches, located at either end of the boiler, and a reel and air-box near the forward hatch.
The hatches were small, rounded toward the after portion and in front fairing into a half-pyramid effect which served as a cutwater or coaming for the hatch. In this coaming were located deadlights, forward and to either side, through which the boat was conned while awash. Their covers, hinged at the after part of the coaming, were secured from the inside by bolts and fitted into a rubber gasket to insure a watertight joint. The officers stood at their stations with their heads in these hatchways.
At the right side of the forward hatch, a reel projected off at an angle. This served to hold and pay out the cord lanyard for the torpedo firing device. This is very clearly shown in the sketch previously mentioned.
Just aft of the forward hatch a small boxlike structure was to be seen. This is a rather interesting contrivance since it represents the attempt of the designer to ventilate his hull while on the surface or just submerged. It opened beneath into the hull. Through it ran a hollow shaft, leaving the sides through stuffing boxes. At each end a 4-foot piece of 1½-inch iron pipe was connected with it by an elbow and it ran aft, its end touching the deck when not in use. Within the box, the transverse shaft was tapped by a short hollow lever, at the end of which was a valve. This lever served the double purpose of raising the outside pipes and controlling the air admission.
On either side of the hull just behind the line of junction of the boiler and the ends, a pair of diving fins 'were located, the prototypes of the present-day diving rudders. They were operated by a lever on their shaft at the forward station within the hull. They were about 5 or 6 feet long and a foot wide.
The stern assembly was unusual. A two- bladed propeller served to drive the boat. It was about 2½ feet in diameter and revolved within a wrought-iron band which acted as a guard for splashing and would prevent the screw from fouling ropes which might be thrown or used as a torpedo net by an enemy ship.
Behind this ring and attached to it was the rudder. Exactly how this was operated by the single rod which connected it to the wheel is not known. As can be seen in the sketch, a rod passes through the center of the rudder. This would prohibit the steering rod acting in and out, since only a right turn could be executed with this type of steering action. It is possible that the rotation of the steering rod could turn the rudder, the whole rod assembly being rigid, but this is an unusual and unlikely method; however it is this type which was built into the model for want of a better one.
The hull inside was traversed nearly its entire length by a crankshaft which furnished the power to turn the propeller. This shaft, supported by 5 brackets extending out from the right wall, had positions for 8 men. Since it was in all probability cast (all the other parts of the boat being so constructed), the cranks were in one plane. The only existing sketches of the inside of the hull so describe it, but it was thought by some that the cranks were made in at least 2 planes for a more even rotation. The men sat within the hull in a staggered row on small brackets attached to the walls and completely filled the small space.
Under the shaft, in the mid-line, 3 bolts and wrenches projected up from the bottom. These led through stuffing boxes to the cast keel and held it to the hull. In case of emergency this keel could be dropped from within. In practice it failed to release.
At each end, the hull was limited by the bulkheads previously described. The hatchways were located just within these partitions and at each one an officer had his station. The forward station had, in addition to the wheel under the coaming, a valve to flood the forward tank and a shelf for the compass and candle, used for steering while submerged. The axle of the diving fins ran along the bulkhead and their lever stuck out from the shaft at the angle of the planes. Below, a small hand-operated force pump connected with the tank and emptied outside the hull, check valves preventing the outside water from coming in through the pump. To one side, on the right wall of the hull, a glass tube of mercury allowed the captain to tell his submerged depth. This was in the field of illumination of the candle.
At the after station, there were only the inlet and outlet pipes with their valve and pump. The second officer established trim at the captain’s command and when this was done took his place at the eighth crank, turning it with the crew until a change in trim would necessitate his duties elsewhere. He was the first man out and the last one in, being charged with all flooring and casting off.
When the crew were at their stations and the hatches bolted down, the captain had a choice of two ways to submerge. He could have the men start ahead on the crank and flood down his tanks until the hatches were barely awash and the boat had a slight positive buoyancy, and then drive it down with his diving planes, hold it at the desired depth by their use and surface the same way. Or, he could sink his boat by flooding the tanks until a slight negative buoyancy was established and, starting ahead on the screw, hold it at the desired level by inclining the planes up a bit. When ready to rise, the tanks were pumped out and the craft rose. This was the customary procedure as it was easier on the crew.
At top speed the craft could make about 3 or 4 miles per hour. She was rather unhandy and answered her helm slowly, as could be expected. One officer connected with her said that her buoyancy was so slight that she could sink for any or no reason. Despite this, she carried iron ballast in her tank sections.
She was first tried out at Mobile and must have been successful in her tests, despite her failure to rise after one dive. The cause of this loss has never been ascertained but the entire crew of 9 lost their lives. When raised, she was mounted on 2 flat cars, well covered with tarpaulins, and shipped by rail to Charleston.
The first two crews at Charleston, both under the command of Lieutenant John Payne, C.S.N., were lost when she twice swamped with her hatches open, once when the swell from a passing steamer filled her hull, and once at Fort Johnson where the vessel alongside which she moored moved off without warning. In this sinking, besides Payne there were two survivors. Fourteen men died.
The next crew, from Mobile under the command of Horace Hunley and Thomas Parks, took over at Fort Johnson, where they raised and learned to handle her quite well, so well that they became careless and shortly after did not emerge from a dive.
When the hull was raised for the third time in Charleston, the cause of the failure was clearly discovered. She had been proceeding along on the surface and was seen to dive. When found the bow had nosed into the mud at an angle of 30 degrees, the stern being high. When the hatches were tried, much to the surprise of the salvagers they opened readily, showing that the bolts had been released from within. Air and gas rushed out and in the air space within each hatchway was seen the head of the officer, asphyxiated. Each had his right hand over his head in an attitude showing that he had been trying to open the hatch when he died. Hunley held a new candle in his left hand. The hull was flooded and the rest of the crew drowned.
It was discovered that the valve on the inlet of the forward tank was wide open, its handle having slipped off and fallen into the bilge. The after tank was dry. The bolts holding the keel were loosened but had not been turned enough to release the keel. From these facts the tragedy was reconstructed as follows: Hunley, giving the order to dive, opened his valve before lighting the candle and the boat dove rapidly, leaving the hull in darkness. He probably wasted a few minutes trying to light the candle, during which time the tank flooded and ran over the open top. The crew, feeling water rising about their feet, warned him and he either forgot the valve was open, or else tried to close it and in the dark knocked the handle off and could not find it. He must have ordered Parks to empty his tank and doubtless tried to pump his, but the water gained so rapidly that he must have given the order to drop the keel as a last resort and when this failed both he and Parks tried to open their hatches and escape this way. It may have been that the air was not yet under sufficient pressure to offset the outside water pressure and they could not budge their hatches. Most of the air in the boat went into the empty stern section but enough collected in the two hatchways to allow the officers to keep their heads above the water which caused the death of the crew. The entire crew are buried in Charleston. The date of their deaths was October 15, 1863.
This accident, in line with the others, was not altogether due to the boat. Throughout she was dogged with an unfailing bad luck. The fourth crew, after practicing many dives under the receiving ship in the Cooper River, fouled the boat in a rope hanging overboard and suffocated. They were practicing the type of attack to be used against an ironclad, in which the fish boat would dive beneath the enemy and her torpedo, towed behind on a float, would explode while the submarine was protected from concussion by the enemy’s hull.
The loss of this crew and the facts that the monitors were anchored in positions unfavorable to successful torpedo attack and had instituted a most vigilant guard against them, caused the Confederates to shift their attentions to the wooden hulled blockaders, since they were anchored much closer inshore than were the ironclads. For this they developed a new torpedo.
When the David exploded her torpedo against the New Ironsides in October, she was so badly damaged as a result of the explosion of her own torpedo that her crew deserted her and took to their life belts. That she was recovered and brought back to Charleston was due to great good fortune and a very capable engineer. It proved that the explosion of 100 pounds of powder on the end of a 30-foot spar was quite dangerous to a submerged torpedo ram. The boat with its low power and buoyancy would have been troubled to carry such an unwieldy weapon. Accordingly a torpedo was designed which could be mounted on a short pole and which would delay its explosion until the attacking vessel could back off to a safe position. It consisted of a steel head which fitted as a thimble over the end of the 10-foot spar or pipe projecting from the bow. This was driven into the enemy’s wooden hull by ramming and was retained there by saw-toothed corrugations when the fish boat backed off. As it slipped off the spar, it would keep with it the torpedo, which was a simple copper can of powder fitted with a trigger. This trigger was attached to a cord lanyard carried on a reel on deck and after the boat had backed a safe distance, 150 yards, the rope was to tighten and would trip the trigger.
The fifth crew, under the command of Lieutenant George Dixon, set out on the night of February 17, 1864, and sank the Sousatonic, described as a steam sloop of 16 guns. Lieutenant F. J. Higginson, in his official report the next morning to Admiral Dahlgren, stated that the torpedo struck the ship and a minute or so later the explosion occurred, the ship sinking rapidly.
The submarine never returned. After the war it was found by divers who reported that the hull was intact and that the propeller was readily turned. It was not stuck in the hole in the Housatonic’s side as has been reported. It is this author’s humble opinion that the cause of the sinking was due to the fact that the Housatonic had started to back and that the side drag on the lanyard caused a premature explosion of the torpedo before the submarine had reached a safe distance. Since she was so close, the force of the explosion may have capsized the little craft and allowed the water to run from her tanks into the hull where it would have been beyond reach of the pumps. With the slight negative buoyancy such as was usually used when they were submerged, she would have stayed down. This, again, is only a theory, based on the report of the divers as to her hull’s condition and her inside construction.